New House Q & A

Holy cow did you guys have questions about the whole selling/moving/buying process since yesterday’s little announcement! So we decided an FAQ post would answer as many as we could. We originally planned to share it tomorrow but you guys are still sending questions our way so furiously that we decided to share this guy today and our regularly scheduled DIY post will go up in the morning. So heeeeeeeere we go! #warningitslong

Q: Will you sell your current house by owner like you did with your first house?Since it worked out so well for us last time, we’d love to! So other than possibly paying a few hundred dollars to have it listed on MLS again, we’re planning to market it and show it ourselves (we’ve actually already had three showings, so our fingers are crossed). We don’t even have a For Sale sign out front yet since we have been doing private showings to realtors and interested locals who are ing us directly, so it’s kinda weird. Haha!

Q: Did you consider renting out your current house instead of selling it? We did! But we talked to a few realtors who said that a few homes in our neighborhood that were for rent were having a hard time holding tenants since the lots were so big (renters in our area typically want very small yards so there’s less for them to mow/maintain). So we shifted our focus to selling since things in our neighborhood seem to be picking up in that department (many homes are selling fast nearby, so we’re hoping ours follows suit).

Q: When will you move in?
We have to sell our current house first and think showing it with furniture will help that process ( we don’t want to move all of our furniture to the new house and then have the sale fall through). So our best guess would be that we’ll (hopefully) move into our new house in June, although it really all depends on when we sell and when our closing date is. But we’re already working on the new house as well as finishing things up around here, so along with all the staging/showing/selling posts about our current house, there will definitely be new house projects, plans, and pictures working their way into the mix. Ahhh, it gets me so excited to type that!

Q: Wait, are you selling your current house fully furnished!? Sorry! I made a comment about wanting to keep our furniture here in order to sell it faster on yesterday’s post and it sounded like we were selling it furnished but I quickly updated it in the hopes of squashing that self-started rumor. Haha! We’re not selling it furnished, we just want furniture in the house when it’s for sale (since empty houses traditionally sell slower and for less money) – but although we’re bringing our furniture with us a lot of things will be in different places in the new house since the layout is so different, which should be fun to play around with!

Q: How many square feet is it? How can it be the same square footage as your current house when it looks so much bigger?! It’s almost exactly the same square footage of our current house, which we love (it’s around 2,500 square feet). It’s just that our current house has an 1,000 square foot addition hiding in the back that you can’t see at all from the front, so that’s why it looks almost as small as our first house (which was half the size). Meanwhile the new house doesn’t have anything hiding in the back and instead has a second floor that’s in plain sight from the street, which makes it look a lot bigger.

Q: Your new house is so pretty on the outside you won’t have a thing to do to upgrade it! That’s the funny thing about cropped photos. Below is a panned out shot that shows that there’s definitely work to be done. So we think the outside will keep us nice and busy too…

Q: Tell me more about what made you love this house in this neighborhood. Would you have taken any house in that area, or did it have to be the right one? We definitely wouldn’t have just taken anything in our budget because we always want a house that works for our family (right house in the wrong neighborhood is sort of the same womp-womp as the right neighborhood but the wrong house). So the sweet spot was finding both. And when we pulled down the street and saw this baby at the end of the cul-de-sac (zero through traffic! a spot for Clara to ride a bike! a bug-hunting mecca for Burger!) we were completely smitten. And when the layout inside didn’t disappoint, we practically lunged for the offer papers. She might not look like much right now, but we think she’s going to clean up real nice :)

Q: How did you keep this a secret?! This was BY FAR the hardest part for us! There were so many moments I wanted to over-share every detail with you guys as we went! This house sort of came out of nowhere, very quickly. We were very casually looking since we anticipated not needing something ’til this summer (or later). Then we saw it we had that moment of “we either go for it or be okay with losing it!” And we realized we weren’t okay with losing it. We actually closed on it in the fall (now can you see how hard this secret was to keep?!?!?) but we had a million balls in the air (a book tour in progress, a bunch of projects for our current house that we wanted to finish before we announced/sold, and a few immediate upgrades to deal with in the new house like a leaking roof, a bad furnace, an alarm install and an opossum in the crawl space (all of which we can’t wait to post about in detail for you guys).

We actually debated spilling the beans about things a lot sooner but we worried it would make us feel torn in half (wanting to stay focused on finishing and selling our current house, but knowing many of you would’ve mentally “moved on” to the new house). We also had to think about things like safety (we just weren’t comfortable telling the entire internet that we had a new house that would be unoccupied for a big chunk of time). So we made the call that waiting, as challenging as it was, was best for our family, this blog, and our new house’s safety. And that way we could focus and knock out what we needed to do here before shifting into “new house mode” when we were ready. Boy does it feel good to be in that mode now. I ran around the house singing .

Q: Last time you closed on your current house on the same day that the new owners closed on your old house, but this time it you bought the new house before selling your current house. What went into that decision? Once we were 100% sure that this was The House, we knew putting in a bid with a contingency that we had to sell our current house would weaken our offer. And we didn’t want to lose that house! There was actually another offer on it, so we knew we needed to have a strong and compelling offer to get it and we didn’t want to offer over asking price, so we decided that going into it without a contingency to sell our house would make for a compelling offer. We were so glad that the bank finally recognized us both as full time self employed people (we’ve been doing this blog thing full time together for nearly 3 years), which was a very different situation then when we bought our first and current house (more on that here) – and it was amazing to get the “you guys got it!” call.

Obviously carrying two mortgages for any period of time isn’t fun. But we triple-checked our savings before bidding to make sure we could handle it and found other ways to save. For instance, if we’re able to sell our current house by owner like we did for our first house, we stand to save ourselves more than all the extra mortgage payments that we’ve been making combined (since we won’t have to pay a seller’s agent commission). Plus, those overlapping mortgage payments are helping us pay down our loan (yay equity!), so it’s not like money going out without a return (like renting or writing a seller’s agent check).

Q: I need more details! We know, and we’re itching to give them. But please understand that we won’t be discussing certain identifying details on our blog (like what neighborhood it’s in or specific info about our closing) because we want to keep some semblance of privacy intact, so we’re resisting the urge to over-share in that regard this time! We know that you guys understand that we need to keep some personal details private and we appreciate all of you who respect that. We’d be naive to think someone couldn’t dig up the info if they really wanted to (real estate is public record), but we’re not going to hand anyone anything on a silver platter over here. Haha! Thankfully our current address was leaked even before we moved into this house back in 2010 and we haven’t had a single issue and our alarm system gives us amazing peace of mind (let’s just say it talks to us and has eyes for us). And then there’s our ferocious guard dog…

Q: When was it built?How many bedrooms and bathrooms does it have? It was built 32 years ago and it has 4 bedrooms and 2.5 bathrooms (so there’s actually one less tub for me to clean). The main bathroom on the first floor is a half bath, which I’m already dreaming of redoing… once we strip all the wallpaper!

Q: How much do you think you’ll make selling your current house thanks to all the improvements you put into it? That would make a fun post! Just like this post that we shared when we sold our first house, we’re definitely excited to see how it all pans out and spill all the details about how much we put into this house in home improvements vs. how much those upgrades affected the sale price. Based on the interest in our current house (we’ve had three showings!) realtors seem to think that our listing price is good so we’re hopeful there might even be a smidge of profit in there this time!

Q: Is it sad to leave Clara’s big girl room without her moving in? From the moment we moved in back in 2010, we always intended for that room to be a playroom (even though it somehow turned into a junk room for 2 years, oops!) so it has been awesome to finally enjoy that space and use it the way we always intended. Even if Clara isn’t quite ready to sleep in there yet, she has logged lots of play-time in there and if she had moved in there we’d have an empty nursery, so either way we knew she couldn’t sleep in both spaces so one would be a playroom while the other serves as her bedroom. The nice thing is that everything comes with us except for the walls, so since we didn’t do anything structural in there (like add a built-in accent wall or bunk-bed system) or cover the walls with anything fancy that stays behind (ex: cool wallpaper or a big wall mural) it can all end up at the new house with us.

Q: What about all the things that you did to this house that you can’t take with you? Like the penny tile and the new fireplace and the pergola? We love love love those things, and will definitely be sad to leave them, but we did them ourselves – which means we can always tackle them again (and alter them in new ways) for the new house if we want them there. We’re just suckers for showing a house some love, so we would never want to live anywhere and “hold back” on doing things just because we can’t take them with us (for us, doing them is half the fun sometimes). So it’s nice to spend the time that we have with those beauties while we live in the house, and know that they’ll live on. I’m deeply comforted by the fact that we can always drive by and wave at the pergola. Yeah, that’s definitely going to happen.

Q: I’d love to see a post talking about which of your recent projects you did for resale value and why you chose them. Nearly everything we’ve done recently has been on our to-do list for over a year. So they weren’t things we added to our roster for resale – they were just things we knew we’d love to tackle, many of them from the day that we moved in. So it was less about which projects we chose to do for resale (none really) and more about which projects from our to-do list that we decided to move ahead with. For example, converting a storage room into a useful playroom and upping the curb appeal wouldn’t hurt, but double siding the fireplace (which would involve a mason and a contractor since it’s load bearing) felt like more of an “if we were staying longer we’d love to do it” item. So there were a few things that we didn’t think made financial sense to do right now but we did pretty much everything else on our to-do list that we hoped to do. We’ll share a final rundown of Listy McListerson with everything checked off, and at the bottom we’re planning to put all the “would have been nice” items that we skipped – but secretly hope the new owners end up doing so we can house crash them. Haha!

Q: Will you guys miss the convenience of a ranch and having everything on one floor? We think it’ll be fun to try out a completely new house layout since our first and second house were pretty similar to each other. And I’m sure there will be tons of things that we miss about having a ranch, but we’re excited to see how a two-story house works for our family. We love that the laundry room is on the second floor with all of the bedrooms, which was one thing we really liked about ranches (not taking piles of laundry up and down stairs).

We also secretly hope that the upstairs will help us with separating work from family stuff, so we think we’ll institute a no-laptops-upstairs rule. Since we’re only twenty steps from our office when we step out of bed in our current house, it’ll be nice to be a whole floor away from it in our new house. And it’ll be awesome not to have to clean the whole house when people come over (if they’ll just be on the main level, we can shut the bedroom doors upstairs and ignore the mess like we did when we grew up in two story houses, haha).

Whew! So that should do it! Hope that helped guys. And we can’t wait to share a floor plan and all the crazy wallpaper-and-blue-trim-laden before pics with you guys while we finish things off at our current house and get this baby sold. Fingers crossed…

I just ahd another WHAT!?! moment… You said you closed on it in the fall. It would be interesting to see what you’ve done to the current house knowing that this one was waiting on the sidelines…you know…all in one place instead of making us go back through archives. *wink*

Congrats again! I remember you posting at some point about having a big surprise to share this year– is this it, or could there possibly be even more!? This is definitely a big surprise!!

Have you been “staging” your current home to sell it? It’s already amazing as it is, but I’d be interested to see if you’ve made any small changes/put things in storage in order to make it seem less personal to potential buyers.

Yup, this is the big surprise! Haha! It was KILLING ME not to share it! Oh man, I feel ten years younger now that it’s out. Hahahahah! And as for how we’re staging/showing our home, we’ll definitely do a post all about that :)

I was wondering the same thing! Since that post (sorry but can’t remember when it was posted) about something HUGE coming, I kept thinking, “When are they going to reveal it?” but then the lampshades collection came out and I though maybe that was it. Though this makes much more sense! Congrats guys! As a reader who has been following from the very beginning, I’m excited to ‘move on’ with you to your new house!

So excited for your whole family! Will you talk a bit more on the FSBO thing? We are considering that as an option when my hubby gets new orders soon (airforce). But I am feeling completely intimidated. Thanks!

If you’re in a city that it services and FSBO is too intimidating you should try Redfin – it’s sort of a hybrid approach where they focus on customer service and refund a portion of the commission when you sell. Good luck!

Very neat! One question I had, and it may be too soon to tell until you start actually packing or moving, but do you imagine that any of the bigger ticket mobile items (so furniture, basically) will get sold or stay behind or otherwise not make it to the new house? I remember when you moved last time, you included some stuff or it didn’t make the cut for one reason or another, and was curious if you had thoughts in regards to that already?

We have definitely been craigslisting stuff we don’t need (I want to do a huge recap of all that we sold this year or something, it’s crazy!). And karl won’t fit as he is in our new living room but we have a little idea about how we can fix that. The short answer is that we’re sure everything will evolve and we’re just playing it by ear! Haha!

You closed in the fall? Wowsa! I would have been bursting at the seams for sure. Awesome that you are so responsible to look ahead and see if you could cover both mortgages, etc. You are blessed, many wouldn’t be able to do that. Well done you two, well done!

Oh man, stairs will totally change things for you. When we first got married we lived in an 800 square foot condo (which was obviously all on the same level) and last summer we bought a 1970s tri-level. It provides a bit of natural division for decorating in slightly different styles, too.

The pergola made me cry. I just love it so much! Our house has come so far. Sniffle. It’s definitely bittersweet, but in the end I’m so much more excited about the possibility of the new house than imagining myself staying here and sitting on my hands. I have a craving to strip wallpaper and paint trim. Is that totally insane or what?!

Congrats! Just curious – did you guys use a realtor for the purchase? We are getting ready to make an offer and are FSBO on our current house, so not sure how we’re going to handle the purchase yet (i.e. using the sellers agent, getting a separate buyers agent, not using one at all, etc.)

Ana, definitely get a (recommended by people you trust) buyer’s agent! The sellers pay the commission and if you don’t have an agent, the sellers’ agent gets a doubled commission while you have no one to represent you.

(And trust me, I’m not realtor schill. We tried to buy a house without an agent hoping we could get back the agent’s commission on the house price, but everyone just shot us down. But yeah, as a buyer it’s a win-win situation.)

Net profit, meaning we’ll get back what we put into it and then hopefully have a smidge extra. As soon as we have an offer that’s rolling we’ll be sure to have actual numbers for you on how much we spent vs how much we’ll get back :)

Check out the post for that info! We knew we had projects to finish here and by selling our house by owner we’d make back all the money we’d spend on the extra mortgage for those six months and it wasn’t throwing that money away (like a check to a seller’s agent or renting) because the money is gaining equity and actively paying down a mortgage. So we made sure we had the money in the bank but then we didn’t mind spending it when we knew it was there since when we sell this house we’ll basically make up for it by selling by owner and have 6 months more of equity to get back when we do :)

There were lots of factors that outweighed interest money. We waited to sell (and share the news) because we wanted to sell in the spring season when this house looked its best and will hopefully sell for more than it would’ve during the doldrums of winter. We sold in the fall last time and we were constantly nervous about the leaves falling and things looking ugly. Plus, last fall we were focused on our book tour until Feb, so we decided it was best to put selling on hold and focus on finishing this house.

They spent those 6 months earning money on their current house by blogging about renovating it and by increasing the resale value via renovations. Putting it up for sale with so many untouched rooms wouldn’t have been the wisest move. Think of it like a 6-month house flip — the work they’ve put into staging and upgrading for the past 6 months should offset the monthly payments. (Plus spring is the best time to sell.)

It’s like Clara’s ‘big girl room’ that was painted a super neutral ‘milky tea’ color. If they planned on actually moving her in there for a while and not selling right away, it would’ve probably looked A LOT different. They needed to get it ready to sell, so it was labeled as a ‘big girl room’ instead of a ‘we need to paint over all of these mismatched walls from all of the book projects that were photographed in here or else potential buyers will think we’re nuts”.

With that crazy colored duvet, spotted rug, bright art, patterned curtains, flash card wall, and colorful birdcages, I can promise the walls would have been neutral whether we were selling or not. One of our favorite pairings for pops of color (in the rug, curtains, art, bedding, etc) are light neutral walls. You can check out our living room, dining room, & office to see that in action! Also, we repainted the kitchen bright blue (which definitely isn’t a neutral) and did incredibly specific things (pergola anyone?!), which aren’t necessary or even recommended for resale. They were just on our master list and we couldn’t wait to see them through :)

Before your big “we’re moving” announcement, literally just a few days before, I was talking with my sister about how I felt like your first house always had this “home” feeling; like I could live there in a second sort of feeling. But I never had that feeling with your second house. Don’t get me wrong your second house is amazing and you two have done a wonderful job making it that way. But it never really felt like it had that “home” feeling to me. You have not even shared the inside of house three yet and already it feels like “home” to me.

That is SUCH a long time to keep that a secret! I am looking forward to seeing all your new projects with this house, as well as what sort of things you loved so much in your current house that you translate them into the new one. I for one am going to miss that penny tile! But maybe that’s a sign I should keep it mind for my own “someday.”

That actually had been on Listy McListerson from before we bought the new house, so the original color was sort of needling us for a while and then we started to think “should we repaint this?” – we definitely did it for the glory of a pretty after picture and not for future buyers, especially because who knows if they like blue!

Congratulations! My husband and I are always on the look out for the next home because you never know when the right one will show up. But living in Toronto Canada is EXPONENTIALLY more expensive so i’ll be in my little home a bit longer. Just a tip on having the upstairs laundry; make sure to but a tub or somekind of catchall under your machines in the event that there is a leak! You don’t want that water damage to deal with! Personally, I prefer laundry on the main floor and when it was originally located upstairs in our home, we moved it to the basement and kept the laundry as the best storage room ever!

I also hope you don’t get a lot of blowback about keeping your new house under wraps for awhile; as much as we [your readers] love you guys, this blog is a business that provides for your family, and I definitely understand the fear that readers would mentally move on to the third house while you are still wrapping up living in your second house.

Aw thanks Tracie! It was such a hard thing to keep from you guys, but we knew once we mentioned it we’d get flooded with questions and it would be hard for our readers (and even us!) to focus on the current house, which felt sort of unfair to this poor sweet house, ya know?! Those 2500+ comments (and 100s of questions) yesterday confirmed that this was the way to go. Now we can dive in and share share share :)

I was wondering if you all did a post about how to sell your house yourself, without using a realtor? I feel like you probably did but I can’t find it under projects. We met with a realtor and holy toledo, we will lose money on the deal with this market. If not, no worries. This might be info that one doesn’t share with others. :) Thank you and congrats on your new house! I love the old school charm!

Your new house is BEAUTIFUL! It’s very stunning from the outside. So excited for you guys! Can’t wait to learn more. It’s crazy how your preferences and tastes can change so much from year to year. My husband and I bought our first house last year and, while we are in love with it, we already talk about how we’d look for different things in a house if we were to go house-hunting again.

Congrats again! Fingers crossed for a sale soon. Have you tried burying a statue of Saint Joseph in your yard? I hear it works every time! :)

We bought our new house in November. We were in the garden recently and saw our pup had been digging a little hole and something was sticking out. Went over to see and there was a little plastic St Joseph. ha ha!

Our friend gave us a statue of St. Joseph and we sold our home in 30 days… maybe it does work! I’m enjoying reading your new home adventures since we just put in an offer on our next home this morning. Fingers crossed!

I think things will be really different looking since the rooms are different shapes and the layout is difference, so although we had a lot of our furniture from House #1 in our current house, we think our new house will feel totally different even if some things come with us. Although of course we’re fans of craigslist and thrift stores for selling and buying things that might work better. We can’t wait to see how it all evolves!

Not going to lie…as a reader, I’m a little bummed to hear you bought it 6 months ago! Not even from a “nosy” sense, but just because it feels like we’ve been strung along on some of your projects that you really never had any intent of using (Clara’s big girl room being the main one). For some of them, it makes sense–such as just cleaning out the playroom so that people could actually see it was another room. But to decorate it as if she was actually going to sleep there? Meh.

It just seems like you were intentionally misleading us for the sake of blog content. One of the reasons I’ve always enjoyed your blog is because you are so “real,” whatever that means. I just am looking back at all the nice things you said about Clara’s big girl room and justifying your reasons for the paint, etc. now with a different lens.

And yes, you touch on this in the post–you didn’t want us to be invested in the new house while you were still working on the old. But honestly, looking back on your projects for the last six months, it is obvious that you guys WERE invested in the new house. A lot of the projects make a lot more sense when they are framed in the “resale” perspective vs. you guys actually staying there, and your heart just didn’t seem in the old house. I just wish we had been clued in.

I’m so sorry you feel that way Holly! All of those projects were on Listy McListerson way before we even thought about selling. So we always wanted the playroom to be a playroom (and Clara’s room when she outgrew her crib, which could have been Feb or next Feb) and we always wanted to add crown molding, and even talked about repainting the kitchen in the summer of 2012! We just wanted to finish what we started and stay focused, but we couldn’t wait to tell you guys! Sometimes when you share your life with the internet, you have to decide what to share when, and it doesn’t mean you’ll hold anything back once something’s “out”, you just want to wait until the timing makes sense and then let it rip. We just didn’t want to feel torn in half with people craving new house stuff while we still had months of current house stuff to do :)

I hear ya on the response–especially in terms of what not to share and what to share. I just can’t help but feel…well, it just felt like we were marketed to–not treated as readers. Customers, not friends. And I totally get that we aren’t really your friends and that your livelihood is this blog–so technically, we absolutely are your customers! But I think the reason that you guys have been so popular is that in the past, you’ve treated your readers as more “friends” than others.

It just feels like it wouldn’t have been that hard or confusing to say “hey, crazy story, we bought a new house last week! We’re going to plug away at ‘finishing’ our current house, since we want to get it ready for resale. We’ll keep you in the loop as we tackle new stuff (spoiler alert: there’s an opossum!).” And yes, of course we would have wanted to see pictures. But the overall tone would have been much different–one of keeping us in the loop. Now it just feels like a very calculated decision of not wanting to lose pageviews if people were bored with the old house.

I get that you need to make different decisions now that the blog is your family’s livelihood–like being concerned about pageviews, etc. But it just feels a little…icky when we see behind that curtain and realize that your decisions were made from a pageviews/$$ standpoint, not from a wanting-to-connect-with-your-readers standpoint. But then again, I totally understand why you guys need to worry about that stuff!

TL;DR: You are certainly allowed to be concerned about privacy, financial stuff, etc. But I’ve always liked your blog because it was a look into what “real” people did–not how professional DIYers/marketers presented their projects. And it just feels like it is veering towards the latter territory.

Thanks for the thoughtful response Holly! If this was about pageviews & money we would have revealed waaaay earlier and dragged out the entire house hunting and purchasing a closing process! But we just knew even if we said “hold on, we’ll be doing current house stuff too” that we’d lose focus and get lots of questions and it would just pull us in two different directions. We already notice people saying “not a Pinterest challenge post! I need more house info!!!” so it has confirmed that waiting was the right thing for our family. I think if you truly believe that we’re not sharing our lives with you every day on this blog in a genuine way, there’s nothing I can do to convince you of that, but everyday as bloggers we have to choose what parts of our life to share. We hope you can understand where we’re coming from :)

@Holly, I have to disagree and feel the urge to defend John & Sherry!
I don’t think there is one thing misleading about what they’ve been blogging about. Specifically about Clara’s big girl room, there’s almost nothing in that room they can’t take with them to another house. They still shared the process with her (and with us!) and that is what is enjoyable about YHL. Daybeds and pillows and paint colors and birdcages are all very reproducible and very portable.
John & Sherry, I congratulate you and wish you nothing but the best. Thank you for sharing your lives with us, at whatever level you wish. Its your life after all, and you only get one! So no apologies please!

I don’t think Holly “needs to get a grip.” I think she was very honest about her feelings, and shared them in a respectful way. Likewise, Sherry answered respectfully with her own viewpoint.

I appreciated that these boundary issues were discussed in an adult way, with no name-calling or bomb-throwing — and we can always count on that from John and Sherry.

What I try to do is remember the real purpose of the blog — sharing their experiences and skills with us. Now I know how to get started if I want to build a pergola! And what the light from a grellow wall can do to a dark brown floor. They make mistakes so we don’t have to. As a bonus, we get more of a look at their family life than we have any right to, some occasional bad ’80s song lyrics and lots of great photos of Clara and Burger. And all at a low, low price of … zero. I give them a pass on everything else.

Yesterday’s news was so exciting that I spent an embarrassingly long time reading through the comments. May I suggest that Holy reaches out to Kate (page 9 of yesterday’s post)? Personally I can’t believe that some people are not thrilled at your news. We have to be grateful that we have been allowed to have a front row seat into YHL lives and while we consider John and Sherry to be our friends (in our head), we have to remember that we don’t get a vote on personal decisions. Sort of like when we watch a soap opera and suddenly “the part of Drake is now being played by…”

Thanks for the kind answer, Sherry, and not just dismissing me as a hater! (and thanks for the support, Plein Jane!) I definitely hear what you are saying–and do know at the end of the day you guys love what you do. Things just get a little weird, for you guys I’m sure and for your readers too, when you monetize what you love!

I agree with Holly. It just seems like it was all done to keep page views up and doesn’t follow with all of your talk of being open about your processes. But this is your job and you’re experts at marketing yourselves so I can’t fault you for protecting your business.

Everyone is entitled to their opinion (and I am always floored with how graciously you respond to criticism… not because you shouldn’t, but because most people don’t) but I really REALLY hope you see the forest for the trees here, and you see that THOUSANDS of people are thrilled for you, and a couple are a bit thrown off. You work hard and deserve everything you have. You are genuine and that is why people love your blog, not because your whole lives are (or should be) transparent. I think you are doing great, I am way too excited about your new house, and, that’s all I have to say. Thanks for giving us a place to learn and laugh.

Oh yes Angel, we’ve been incredibly humbled (I even happy cried a few times) by the completely overwhelming and amazing excitement and support from you guys! We have the best dang readers ever. That’s for sure!

Yes, I have to agree with Holly. For folks who are concerned with transparency, I feel lied to. I’ve noticed for quite a while that things were off with the blog, and that there was a “let’s get this done to sell” kind of feel. (Having bought and flipped our fifth house, it’s easy for me to recognize.) But I really thought that y’all were very truthful, so I kept writing the feeling off. I am glad you have a new house, but I don’t like the way it was handled. But no matter. It’s your blog, your decision. Just like it’s my decision to read or not. We’ll see. I am intrigued by the new house, so I’ll likely stick around to see how it turns out! Best wishes to you.

Well put Holly. Thanks for bravely (and rationally) voicing your honest feelings–many of which I too felt–and am sure a few others would agree, but might be too afraid to admit.

As diplomatic and gracious as John and Sherry are with their comment responses– sometimes their beloved readers do not follow their lead and respond with knee-jerk-guard-dog ferocity to anyone who dare to question or disagree with the Mighty Petersiks!

I get that the readers feel protective of this lovely family that opens their home and lives to us, but shouting down people for having an opposing viewpoint isn’t healthy either. I have stifled my opinions and held my tongue in the past knowing how fast a comment war could devolve into ugly name calling and bullying. It’s actually kept me away at times :[

We all seem pretty self-aware of our hyper nerdy obsession with this family and this blog (AND their beautiful homes) so everyone’s emotions are running high with this new turn of events–a NEW new house that was purchased 6 MONTHS ago!? Wowzer–so it should come as no surprise to ANYONE that people are going to have strong reactions…and feelings…and responses to the news. Just because someone’s initial reaction was not the same as yours does not make them a bad person unworthy of an opinion (or unworthy of calling themselves a fan of this blog.)

I really like the way you put everything, Holly! I’m a huge YHL fan and totally excited to follow the progress of another new house. But there is a bit of an “ick” factor for me because, even with all the popularity, I still always kind of pictured this blog as what it started out as: a home improvement diary. Now, obviously it was silly to still see it that way. They have hundreds of thousands of readers, their own lighting fixture and paint lines, and articles in nearly every major newspaper and design blog. I mean, heck, I stood outside in 40 degree weather for 3 hours to get them to sign their own best-selling book! Not exactly the characteristics of a little diy diary.

And that’s great! It’s so exciting for them and I still love the work they do. But it’s different, and that’s a little sad. It’s like that episode of “The Hills” when viewers cracked the code that it was re-shot because of LC’s nail polish (What? No other “The Hills” fans? Just me?). Anyways, point is that we all know when we turn on tv or get online we’re not seeing actual reality but it still kind of stings to have it pointed out.

Good news is, there are plenty of little diy diary-type blogs out there! And the other good news is that YHL still puts out amazing content! So when you’re looking for something more on the diary side of the spectrum, tune into one of the hundreds of small blogs (easy to find lots in the comments section of YHL posts) and when you’re looking for some big-time inspiration from a hugely popular full-time blogging couple, tune in here! With just a few weeks away from closing on my very first home, I am so happy to be able to be able to draw inspiration from all of the above!

I’ve posted my congratulations and excitement for you guys on your new adventure already – I really am happy for you, excited to follow you on this new journey, and truly believe you’re both spectacular people who have worked extremely hard and who deserve all of the good things that have come your way.

However, there was also a little “ick” factor that I too felt when the news was revealed. I wasn’t entirely sure what I felt or why or that it was even appropriate! But reading through others’ comments who felt a bit put off by the news, I think I understand it a bit better.

I think some of the (many!) reasons you guys have become so popular is that you’ve always maintained a high level of authenticity and transparency. And you’ve made very real efforts to show us that you’re real people leading real lives outside of DIY home stuff. You’ve shared a lot of stuff with us that was not necessary at all had you wanted to keep the blog strictly project-related, but you guys opened that door yourselves and I’m quite certain that it’s contributed significantly to your blog’s success. It’s obvious that we can’t get enough of your reality show-style blog!

Like with anything you’re convinced is authentic and real, it sucks when you find out that hey, things maybe aren’t as real as they seem… It’s a bit of a slap in the face to feel like you guys were playing us. It’s a little bit sad to feel that we can trust your authenticity a little less. And it’s more sad to realize that this homey little blog of yours has become a lot more bureaucratic.

I totally understand keeping certain things under wraps for the sake of your privacy and safety. But you’ve stated numerous times that this secret was a calculated decision primarily to keep readers focused on the current house. It feels a little unfair that you didn’t trust us to stay interested in the projects for your current house if we had known about the new one. You guys manipulated us. Had you not sprung the news on us with so few details, you probably wouldn’t have gotten so overloaded with comments and questions, and could have gotten back to regularly scheduled current-house business.

At the end of the day, I think this was something you guys could have handled differently and more openly. You should have trusted us. I’m still going to continue reading your blog and I still think you guys are great people, but I’ll view you in a slightly different light now. Some of my trust for you and your genuineness is gone now. It’s difficult to trust you now when you kept something so big for so long that is completely associated with your blog’s primary topic.

I completely understand how you could feel that way and I’m truly sorry. It’s never our intention for anyone to feel duped, we just made the call that we thought was best for our family and our new house’s safety. It had nothing to do with manipulating you guys, and everything to do with keeping OUR heads in the right place. We were so scared we’d mentally shift into “new house mode” the second we mentioned it, or even worse, that our new house (which was empty and had no alarm system for a while) could be compromised. It took about two minutes for people to look up public records on Tuesday and find out our new address after we made the announcement, so we’re more certain than ever this was the right way to go for our family (now the alarm is in and we can rest easier). But we understand how everyone would do things differently if this were their blog. For example, when we talked about potty training or mentioned our current home’s neighborhood a few years back, some people cried “too much! you don’t have to over-share everything!” and then with this announcement there were some people like you and Holly (and probably others) who wished we had shared more and were hurt that you weren’t in the know. It just came down to us making a choice, knowing full well that some people would have done things differently, but we’ve learned that it’s really hard to please everyone all the time, as much as we’d LOVE to!

This is really cool. Congrats on the new place! We have a two story place with some of the same cosmetic issues you have mentioned, so I look forward to seeing what you guys do with your place, then shamelessly stealing your ideas!

I didn’t comment on yesterday’s post, so I may as well tell you today. CONGRATS :) I can’t believe you closed in the fall. It made me go back and look at your 2013 New Year Resolutions post. I guess this is what your first resolution meant when you said “Hold On”. Yeah, this is a pretty big cat in a pretty big bag alright. I’m so happy for you guys!

The fall? Wow! Good for you for stayng so focused. If it were me – I would never have been able to stay focused on the current house. Of course I get it that this all a business decision as well. I look forward to seeing the floor plan. wishing a quick sale.

Forget my correction, when I was reading this there weren’t any other comments and I see others mentioned the same thing:) love ya guys, didn’t want to come off as annoying by mentioning a correction:)

We live in Richmond and are looking to buy ….could you send me details of your ‘for sale’ listing? We’d LOVE to come see it! Very interested! It’s perfect for our little family! Sent you an email as well :).

Hahah! Yes! That thing on the side is a garage! John’s so excited to have his workshop right out the kitchen door instead of out in the backyard and down some stairs and in a separate locked room under the house. Haha!

Thanks for the post! All day yesterday I was waiting for a follow-up like this one and when I saw the Pinterest post today I said “what the what?!”

And of course you were the first topic of conversation I talked about when I got into bed with my husband last night- weird, maybe!? But we are so happy for you!

And, AMEN for two stories and company! I love our raised ranch but you are right. Whenever you have company your ENTIRE house is on display and people seem to wander in and out of every room even though if they were in a two story house they would only be in the common areas. Only “rancherS” can know this particular kind of pain!

I had to laugh along with Julie G as my husband and I had a fairly rare mid week date night last night and I had to tell him all about the new house while we were having a nice dinner out together! And he was as excited as I was! LOL!

Just to inundate you with more questions….the new house has a style that seems so much more traditional and different from the MCM vibe in the ranch. Do you see your own decor style changing to work well with the new house?